Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [150]
“Of course, not that she told me everything. I do know that the man who rides upon the dragon is the same man who killed my brother. I understand, now, why the Goddess gave me that longbow.”
“Indeed, indeed.” Hir-li grinned again. “Did her holiness happen to tell you when she would strike against the creature?”
“Soon, I suppose, but she didn’t tell me much. Perhaps, my lord, you should summon her and ask her outright.”
“It is not for me to summon a priestess, Lord Tren. It is for me, it is for all of us, to wait for her holy words.” The warleader stared down into the demoralized camp. “I only pray that we won’t have to wait long.”
Simply because she knew Jill’s brusque manner, Dallandra took on the job of bearing bad news. She found Carra up in the women’s hall, sitting alone at the window and leaning onto the sill to crane her neck for a glimpse of the relieving army. Her thin underdress stretched tight over her swelling pregnancy. It’s a fine world I’ve lured Elessi into, Dallandra thought. I hope to all the gods she isn’t born in the middle of a siege. Carra glanced her way, then sat up properly, smiling.
“Good morning, Dalla. Have you any news?”
Dallandra hesitated, searching for phrases. Carra’s smile melted away.
“What’s happened to Dar?”
“Naught, naught. My apologies! I must look ghastly grim.”
“You do, and I thought, well, maybe you’d scried out Dar, and …” Carra let her voice trail off.
“I’ve bad news, sure enough, but not about your husband. It’s Yraen. He died scouting last night.”
Carra made a painful sound, half a grunt, half a sob, and turned her face away.
“I know I shouldn’t care,” she whispered. “He was only a silver dagger, and just my guard, and princesses aren’t supposed to care, but I do. Oh, Yraen!”
She dropped her face to her hands and sobbed, while Dallandra patted her shoulder to comfort her.
Evandar returned to the high hill overlooking the lands to find his armor and clothing gone. When he raised his hand, the astral stuff gathered and clung, and with the light he wove himself new, the leather trousers and long tunic of a man of the Westfolk, the chain mail and pot helm of a Deverry man. Once he was properly dressed again for war, he paced back and forth on the hill crest and considered where Alshandra might be.
“Well,” he said aloud, “she’s not in my Lands, and she’s not in the Lands that lie a-borning. She never liked to fly high into the lands of golden light above us, though now and again she did fly low into the silver light beneath us. Into the silver light, therefore, shall I travel, but in this form, I think, not as the hawk, who has no hands.”
He stepped off the hillside onto the air in the way an ordinary man might step off a stair onto the ground. As if a stairway stretched ahead of him, as well, he walked downward, thinking of Deverry with every step, until the light round him turned a strange silvery-blue. When he looked down, his own Lands had disappeared, and the rolling hills round Cengarn lay in their stead, these all a rusty-red from the auras of the grasses and trees. To Cengarn, he decided, he would go, in case Alshandra was lurking nearby in the hopes of troubling the unborn soul of their daughter, whose new body lay growing in Carra’s womb.
Close to noon, the Deverry army saddled up. The carters harnessed up their teams and drove the carts out, loaded with everyone’s gear as well as the general supplies, to clear the field of battle. Just as the army mounted, word passed along that the cavalry in the enemy camp was mounting in answer, while their spearmen were forming shield walls at the gaps in the earthworks.
“Shield walls, eh?” Erddyr said. “That doesn’t sound like the cavalry will be coming out to meet our challenge. More of a precaution, them arming.”
“Just so, my lord,” Rhodry said. “Well, we’re harnessed and ready to go. We’ll see how long they can hide.”
After a few words with Arzosah, Rhodry mounted, and they flew out to the south, circling to gain height and position off where the raven couldn